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Tasteless bread

Tasteless bread

Hello,

for some time now I'm trying to bake a tasty bread. Everything I bake looks great from the outside and good texture on the inside but tastes after nothing. I switched from wholemeal flour to spelled flour because it has a more distinct flavour. Thru this website I started with prefermentation which does add a little bit more flavour to the bread. Of course adding stuff like sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and linseed it gets more tasty but the basic bread taste remains tasteless. And it has to be possible to bake a tasty bread without all kinds of taste additives.

Well, depending on your definition of flavor additives, you might find it useful to try spices or other natural flavorings.

One recipe on this website uses orange juice in place of the sugar and part of the water, and adds powdered turmeric. I found it quite flavorful when I tried it. It tasted like having orange marmalade on toast.

If you want something less adventuresome, try replacing some of the water with buttermilk or yogurt.

If you want savory spicy bread, adding any of your kitchen seasonings in small quantities will flavor the bread. Caraway seeds are often used in rye breads but they will work in any bread if you like the flavor of that spice. Even a pinch of Mrs. Dash would probably work if you don't stock many spices.

Another thing you might try is increasing the amount of pre fermented flour to 30%. As your recipe stands now your total pre ferment is only about 12% of the total formula. Soaking a portion of the remaining flour with a bit of salt and water for 12 hours should help too. Longer your grains ferment the more flavor you will end up with as long as you don't over ferment :-O

Try this:

Pre ferment: 120g flour 90g water .5g instant yeast Mix and then place in the refrig. for 12 hours.

This gives you a biga type of pre ferment which is firmer than a poolish. It's hydration is at 75%.

As your formula is written above I calculate your hydration at 91% which is a really wet dough especially when using spelt flour It isn't a very thirsty flour. I lowered it to 75% which makes only 318g total water.

You can mix the pre doughs in the night and add to the final dough in the morning. Knead and then allow dough to ferment and then shape and proof if that works into your day. Or you can mix the pre doughs in the morning and mix in the late afternoon and bake bread in the evening. Whatever works with your time frame.

I prefer whole grain breads.... but not lean whole grain breads : ) I like mine with an egg, milk powder, potato flour (to keep it moist), a little sweetener, and some oil or butter. I know others enjoy whole grain lean breads, but to me they are cardboard-like (and I have ground my own flour for over 20 years!). I just like them enriched : ) and they are very healthful. Perhaps you could try it and see what you think.

I saw I made a mistake on the quantity of water I used it's not 390 gr. of water but 290 gr. (max). I added up all the ingredients you've mentioned in your aswer. The amount of water is 318 gr. opposite only 425 gr. flour. This is too much fluid. In my recipe I have 500 gr. flour and 275 -290 gr. of water. That's the amount to get a good dough with speltflour.

I don't understand the soaker part of your recipe. Can you explain?

You use a total of 9 gr. of yeast. Isn't the preferment ment to lower the amount of yeast and add taste. Whith my initial recipe (4 gr of yeast) I get a well raised bread and good inside texture (but unfortunately with less taste).

A soaker is a way to make sure all of the flour in the recipe is fully hydrated. This is especially important with whole grain flours because they take up more water than refined flours but do so more slowly. Soaking them for the 10 minutes to half-an-hour before kneading which is often recommended in recipes does not do the job.

I only count 4 grams of yeast in Janet's recipe: 0.5 g in the pre-ferment, and 3.5 g in the dough.

I am assuming you are referring to the formula I printed out for you above so that is why I am responding.

I agree on the water amount being too high with spelt flour. Easy solution is instead of 93g in the final dough only use 45-50g - adjust as needed to get the consistency you want.

The total amount of IY in what I wrote out is only 4g. In the pre ferment I suggested using 0.5g and in the final dough 3.5g.

Here is a direct quote from the book Whole Grain Breads written by Peter Reinhart which is designed specifically for whole grains of any kind that explains the function of a soaker: "The soaker serves to precondition some of the grain to begin its enzyme activity, thus releasing sugars but without the risk of overfermentation, since there is no yeast in the soaker. The addition of salt to the soaker controls the enzyme activity to an extent, so the soaker can be left at room temp. instead of being placed in the refrig, thus reucing fermentation time next day." (pg. 58 WGB)

The pre ferment should go into the refrig so that it doesn't over ferment as soon as it is mixed and then, in the morning, give it a couple of hours at room temp. before adding it to your final dough.

Looks and sounds complicated but it isn't once you get the hang of it and it does produce a very nice loaf.

I got my start baking with Nancy Silverton's 'Bread from the La Brea Bakery'. She modified her recipes for home baking by requiring a long ferment AFTER the loaves are shaped. From there, & after reading Peter Reinhart, etc, I believe that the dough can be fermented for long periods at most any stage - but the key to flavor devopment, IMHO, is a long ferment. Instead of a poolish or biga, I mix my entire batch & chill the dough overnight to several days.

I have often wondered about this - most baking books call for a poolish, or biga - which is only a portion of the finished bread. I wonder if fermenting the whole batch would help. One does need alot more refrigerator space if the entire batch is to be chilled overnight. I use my front porch, if the temperature is 40 deg F. or lower. I would love to get feedback on this theory!

I also wonder about using just spelt & rye flours - I don't have much experience with breads with that much spelt - have you tried using half wheat flour? And what is 'bread improver'? I'm pretty suspicious of things like that.

Once I learned how to bake with sourdough I rarely, if ever, use instant yeast in my breads anymore. It does make a huge difference. Lots of recipes here to get you started if you choose that route :-)

I think the math makes your salt at less than 1%. Try doubling the salt which will come out to about 1.5% or even more to 2%.

As I figure it, you have 925g of flour + whatever flour is is your preferment. 8/925= 0.8% salt. We recently had a discussion about this at http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/30533/how-make-tastefree-bread. If you put "tasteless" in the site's search box, you'll find lots of similar discussions. Salt is an oft-made suggestion to cure taste-free bread.

OP has 450g of flour in the recipe, counting that in the pre-ferment if the pre-ferment is at 100% hydration. I don't quite understand how that produces a 500g loaf of bread, though, because my own recipe produces a loaf that is roughly 1.8 times the weight of the flour used.

Your pre-ferment is 0% hydration? Okay, then you have 475g of flour, unless you are counting bread improver as flour. And your bread still weighs more than 500g when it is baked, unless you have baked out all of the water. Weigh it and see. *wink*

Dear commenters, thank you for all your reply's. Unfortunetely It's not possible now to try all your suggestions because the basic element, a kitchen, is no longer in my house. I'm preparing for a new kitchen. I hope it is ready before Christmas but that is not sure. But in januari I will be back on this forum!

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